# Did Lee Harvey Oswald assassinate JFK? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 9, 2007, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950 "2007-08-09T02:28:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/261 "2007-08-14T23:23:35Z")
[QUOTE=denquixote] I don’t understand, is this shooter using a clip to reload? Did Oswald use a clip? [/QUOTE] You misunderstand what Rick is saying. A lot of guns, if you have a scope mounted on the gun, you can’t use the iron sights (because the scope is in the way). Rick is saying that, with the model of rifle that he had, Oswald could have aimed with either the iron sights or the scope. He wouldn’t have had to take the scope off to aim with the sights. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2007, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/262 "2007-08-14T23:40:22Z")
[QUOTE=denquixote] I think we only have the time frame because of the zapruder film, no film - then pure speculation as to the time. who knew zapruder would be there? [/QUOTE] That’s beside the point, really. If we accept that there was a huge conspiracy to make Oswald look guilty while a real assassin carried out the work in secret, why didn’t they hand Oswald a pistol and put him in the middle of the crowd? It makes **no sense** that they would have put the “patsy” not-really-an-assassin up in a window on the off-chance someone would look that way and establish a positive ID. As it was, Oswald got away clean from the Book Depository, and by mere chance he happened across officer Tippit afterward. If there **were** some conspiracy to frame Oswald for the crime, why did he get away, at first? Why didn’t the Conspiracy Guys post cops at the door to the Book Depository? Oswald just strolled out _and even spoke to the cops on the way out._ Makes no sense. Any decent conspiracy would have had officers stationed at the door, forewarned with the date and time of the attempt and with Oswald’s photograph handy. If there were some conspiracy to frame Oswald for JFK’s assassination, why did they capture him alive? The smart thing to do, that anybody who has ever seen a cop movie would know, is that you kill the assassin. Don’t give him a chance to speak. Any decent conspiracy would have had Oswald snuffed before he fled the scene. “Oh well,” the police could have said, “Looks like we got him. No need to investigate further.” Yeah, we can analyze what happened and say, “Gosh, the odds of Oswald doing that are pretty small,” but you can’t assign probability to an event that already happened. You can’t roll dice, come up snake eyes, and then deny it happened because it was only a 1/36 chance. The fact is, the purported conspiracy that was supposed to have framed Oswald is _completely inept_ and would have depended too much on random chance. I could have designed a better frame-up job with my eyes closed. Therefore, I am inclined to think Oswald was not set up by anyone but himself. ---
**Author:** ![denquixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@denquixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/denquixote)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/263 "2007-08-14T23:41:57Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing] You misunderstand what Rick is saying. A lot of guns, if you have a scope mounted on the gun, you can’t use the iron sights (because the scope is in the way). Rick is saying that, with the model of rifle that he had, Oswald could have aimed with either the iron sights or the scope. He wouldn’t have had to take the scope off to aim with the sights. [/QUOTE] What I am wondering is if he did not have a clip, how would he have reloaded the rifle? could he do it as fast? ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2007, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/264 "2007-08-14T23:49:41Z")
[QUOTE=denquixote] I don’t understand, is this shooter using a clip to reload? Did Oswald use a clip? [/QUOTE] Yes. These require a stripper-clip type dealybob to load. If requested, I’ll snap some pictures and post them. The clip is probably 4" long, so you need that much free space above the rifle. Unless Oswald removed the scope mount every time he intended to load the thing, the scope would have to be off to the side (exactly as the pictures of the rifle show). With a slight movement of the head, one can switch back and forth between the military sights and the mounted scope. ETA- [QUOTE=denquixote] What I am wondering is if he did not have a clip, how would he have reloaded the rifle? could he do it as fast? [/QUOTE] Not really, he could have loaded one at a time, but that’s pretty complicated. If the clip was not found that _would_ be a pretty big deal - analogous to accusing someone of firing multiple shots from an M16 and saying they did it without a magazine. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/265 "2007-08-15T00:13:06Z")
[QUOTE=CannyDan] I cannot find a picture now, so this is probably worth less than my usual 2 cents, but— I seem to recall that this rifle had the scope mounted high, and the mount was attached along the side of the receiver. This was necessary because the clip is inserted from above, and both the scope and the scope mount had to be clear of the loading path. In this configuration, again as I recall but cannot demonstrate, the open sights (iron sights) are unobstructed and available. Perhaps indeed the first shot went astray because of close-focus problems with the scope. Neither position change nor disassembly would be needed to use the open sights for subsequent shots. [/QUOTE] You may well be right. I’ve read recently (Bugliosi) that the shooter could have used either the telescopic or iron sights. And yes, **denquixote** , the Mannlicher-Carcano uses a clip. It was found with one live round remaining in it. ---
**Author:** ![ngant17](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ed8c4c/32.png) [@ngant17](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ngant17)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/266 "2007-08-15T00:34:26Z")
It would seem to me, that if I was a sniper on a 5th or 6th story building, and I was shooting at a downward slope into the general vicinity of hundreds and thousands of people in the street, in broad daylight, my sniping location would have been fairly apparent after the 2nd and 3rd shot, there would be little confusion about looking for a second or third location from totally different angles. In war, highly-trained and veteran snipers wouldn’t want to take more than 1 shot, mabye 2, from one location to hit their target in a combat zone, because for each shot, they reveal their location to a greater degree. And lessens their chances of escaping. OTOH, if a team of assassins were lying in wait to accomplish the same aim, and they were dispersed in several ideal nests for shooting their target, a military-style ‘triangulation’ as it were (remember this scenario was mentioned in Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK”), then that diverse group of snipers would serve to disorient the crowds into noticing the location of the sniper, when in fact it was a multitude of snipers in different locations. 3 or 4 teams of snipers, each taking 2 or 3 shots from different heights and angles on the ground, fired in precise timing, it would have created the exact kind of pandemonium which was observed on 22 Nov. 1963 in Dealy Plaza. Yet if Oswald was part of the team of Dealy Plaza snipers, maybe he volunteered to be a distraction, who knows? Maybe he shot blanks? If so, he may have been totally isolated from the other teams. Maybe he was assured of a clean getaway for himself. Maybe that’s what he meant by “patsy” before Ruby silenced him forever. Has anyone actually tried this for themselves? Climb up 6 floors, shoot off a rifle a few times down into the ground, and have a hundred witnesses in the vicinity give a generally-unanimous opinion as to the general origin of the rifle shots? My guess, is that if Oswald was shooting less than 100 ft. away, at a downward angle from a 6th floor window, it would have been a lot more noticeable than having people all going different directions looking for the origin of the gunsmoke and rifle shots, running toward a grassy knowl, the Dal-Tex bldg., a manhole cover on a street, ect. Especially if there were crowds directly below him. What do the self-proclaimed debunking experts like Bugliosi and Posnor have to say on this hypothesis of mine? [QUOTE=BJMoose] You may well be right. I’ve read recently (Bugliosi) that the shooter could have used either the telescopic or iron sights. And yes, **denquixote** , the Mannlicher-Carcano uses a clip. It was found with one live round remaining in it. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/267 "2007-08-15T00:50:00Z")
[QUOTE=ngant17] My guess, is that if Oswald was shooting less than 100 ft. away, at a downward angle from a 6th floor window, it would have been a lot more noticeable than having people all going different directions looking for the origin of the gunsmoke and rifle shots, running toward a grassy knowl, the Dal-Tex bldg., a manhole cover on a street, ect. Especially if there were crowds directly below him. What do the self-proclaimed debunking experts like Bugliosi and Posnor have to say on this hypothesis of mine? [/QUOTE] Eyewitnesses have certainly never before or since been confused and provided conflicting accounts of events. Note: The preceding sentence is REALLY sarcastic. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/268 "2007-08-15T00:59:25Z")
[QUOTE=ngant17] 3 or 4 teams of snipers, each taking 2 or 3 shots from different heights and angles on the ground, fired in precise timing, it would have created the exact kind of pandemonium which was observed on 22 Nov. 1963 in Dealy Plaza. […] What do the self-proclaimed debunking experts like Bugliosi and Posnor have to say on this hypothesis of mine? [/QUOTE] They’d probably say that the snipers were unusually inept since every analysis of the autopsy xrays and photos by people who didn’t go in pre-convinced of a conspiracy concluded that JFK was shot from behind and above (ie, Oswald’s position; or, I suppose, one sniper team’s position at, say, the Dal-Tex Building. Which still leaves another 2 to 3 teams of snipers completely missing.) ---
**Author:** ![ngant17](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ed8c4c/32.png) [@ngant17](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ngant17)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/269 "2007-08-15T01:22:02Z")
I mean, you could have have at least addressed some of the main points in my last post. Why was there confusion with different origins of the shots? Was it due to a mass psychosis from the crowds at Dealy Plaza? Note that I wasn’t necessarily asking you to accept the hypothesis that there were a nest of snipers, but only give me a rational explaination for how could one sniper, Oswald, firing 3 rounds from the same point, created so much disorientation from that single location? The grassy knowl was an optical/auditory illusion? From the echos bouncing across the buildings? Anything beats a snide remark with little intelligent though behind it. Can anyone can site a scientific trial-study based on that experiment, i.e. three shots from a six-floor, shooting downward toward a large group of blind-folded participants, and a statistical survey of the opinions? That might help to convince me, if the experiment was done properly. Which is to say, to compare results from a 2nd similar experiment, but using a team of snipers in 3 or 4 different locations? Rational thinking impresses me the most here. [QUOTE=42fish] They’d probably say that the snipers were unusually inept since every analysis of the autopsy xrays and photos by people who didn’t go in pre-convinced of a conspiracy concluded that JFK was shot from behind and above (ie, Oswald’s position; or, I suppose, one sniper team’s position at, say, the Dal-Tex Building. Which still leaves another 2 to 3 teams of snipers completely missing.) [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/270 "2007-08-15T01:35:24Z")
[QUOTE=ngant17] What do the self-proclaimed debunking experts like Bugliosi and Posnor have to say on this hypothesis of mine? [/QUOTE] :rolleyes: I’m not qualified to carry Bugliosi’s briefcase, but I will be happy to blow this one to hell and back. Four teams of snipers firing 3 rounds each is 12 bullets. Where are the other 9 bullets? :smack: As far as locating the sniper goes, after the second or third shot people on the street were pointing at the School Book Depositary from the parade route. There were pictures in the paper at the time.Try reading [this](http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html#near) > [@](#): > > Well, then something, just right after this explosion, made me think that it was a firecracker being thrown from the Texas Book Store. And I glanced up. And this man that I saw previous was aiming for his last shot.[ And this > [@](#): > > Then I was standing here, and as the motorcade turned the corner, I was facing, looking dead at the building. And so I seen this pipe thing sticking out the window. I wasn’t paying too much attention to it. Then when the first shot was fired, I started looking around, thinking it was a backfire. Everybody else started looking around. Then I looked up at the window, and he shot again. Guess I was wrong, people pegged LHO’s position after the first shot. My bad. if this subject interests you, you might try reading the Warren Commission Report so you can recognize some of the bullshit that is being thrown out there by the CTs. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/271 "2007-08-15T02:13:56Z")
> [@](#): > > The fact is, the purported conspiracy that was supposed to have framed Oswald is completely inept and would have depended too much on random chance. I could have designed a better frame-up job with my eyes closed. Therefore, I am inclined to think Oswald was not set up by anyone but himself. I’ve always wondered why conspiracy theorists aren’t all over FDR’s death. Think about it. If you’re a secret group of shadowy figures who control the government and you decide you want to eliminate a bothersome President, how would you go about it? Would you have him shot in the middle of a public street in front of a hundred witnesses? It’s impossible to be in control of a situation like that. No, you’d arrange to kill the President in some private location with only a handful of people around where you can be in complete control of everything and you’d make it look like he died of natural causes. Which is exactly how Roosevelt died. So when I decide to sacrifice my self-respect and make a million, my book will be about the Plot to Kill Roosevelt. A nice clear unplowed field, a paucity of evidence, and a whiff of plausibility. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/272 "2007-08-15T02:21:55Z")
> [@](#): > > I mean, you could have have at least addressed some of the main points in my last post. Why was there confusion with different origins of the shots? Was it due to a mass psychosis from the crowds at Dealy Plaza? > > Note that I wasn’t necessarily asking you to accept the hypothesis that there were a nest of snipers, but only give me a rational explaination for how could one sniper, Oswald, firing 3 rounds from the same point, created so much disorientation from that single location? The grassy knowl was an optical/auditory illusion? From the echos bouncing across the buildings? Anything beats a snide remark with little intelligent though behind it. Posner wrote that the layout of buildings in Dealey Plaza distorts sounds and makes them echo and sound like they’re coming from different directions. If somebody fired a gun a hundred feet north of a person on the street, the sound waves might reflect off a building and sound like the shot was fired a hundred feet south of the listener. Posner credits the fact that many witnesses claim they heard shots being fired from specific locations other than the book depository building to this - they were all hearing the same echoes. One other thing that Posner wrote was that while there were discrepancies in the witness statements about where the shots came from, virtually everyone agrees on the number of shots fired. There were virtually no witness accounts at the time of extra shots beyond those fired by Oswald - nobody was claiming they heard six, nine, or more shots fired. ---
**Author:** ![CapnPitt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@CapnPitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CapnPitt)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/273 "2007-08-15T02:32:27Z")
Sounds are very easily misheard in terms of location. There was a fuller treatment of acoustics somewhere upthread that I don’t feel like searching for. Seriously **ngant17** , you should write out your entire argument for yourself, read it in full, and apply Occam’s Razor. Does this rule out a conspiracy? Not entirely, but to a vanishingly small chance. A vast preponderance of the evidence is in favor of a lone gunman. My theory as to why this is still such a big deal: people just don’t want to accept the fact that an historical “great man” could be cut down by a nobody. We want something grand enough to match the man. This is also the reason why a much smaller group of people doesn’t want to believe that Elvis is dead, let alone dead from a dru :smack: g overdose (Happy Death Week to all the Memphians out there). ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/274 "2007-08-15T13:12:24Z")
[QUOTE=ngant17] I mean, you could have have at least addressed some of the main points in my last post. Why was there confusion with different origins of the shots? Was it due to a mass psychosis from the crowds at Dealy Plaza? Note that I wasn’t necessarily asking you to accept the hypothesis that there were a nest of snipers, but only give me a rational explaination for how could one sniper, Oswald, firing 3 rounds from the same point, created so much disorientation from that single location? The grassy knowl was an optical/auditory illusion? From the echos bouncing across the buildings? Anything beats a snide remark with little intelligent though behind it. Rational thinking impresses me the most here. [/QUOTE] I’m not sure how pointing out that your hypothetical sniper teams missed their target is either illogical or irrational. It may have been irrelevant to your main point, but if that’s the problem, maybe you should have just asked your main question (‘Why was their so much confusion about where the shots came from’?) and not dragged in the side issue of multiple sniper teams. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/275 "2007-08-15T14:29:03Z")
[QUOTE=ngant17] It would seem to me, that if I was a sniper on a 5th or 6th story building, and I was shooting at a downward slope into the general vicinity of hundreds and thousands of people in the street, in broad daylight, my sniping location would have been fairly apparent after the 2nd and 3rd shot, there would be little confusion about looking for a second or third location from totally different angles. In war, highly-trained and veteran snipers wouldn’t want to take more than 1 shot, mabye 2, from one location to hit their target in a combat zone, because for each shot, they reveal their location to a greater degree. And lessens their chances of escaping. OTOH, if a team of assassins were lying in wait to accomplish the same aim, and they were dispersed in several ideal nests for shooting their target, a military-style ‘triangulation’ as it were (remember this scenario was mentioned in Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK”), then that diverse group of snipers would serve to disorient the crowds into noticing the location of the sniper, when in fact it was a multitude of snipers in different locations. 3 or 4 teams of snipers, each taking 2 or 3 shots from different heights and angles on the ground, fired in precise timing, it would have created the exact kind of pandemonium which was observed on 22 Nov. 1963 in Dealy Plaza. Yet if Oswald was part of the team of Dealy Plaza snipers, maybe he volunteered to be a distraction, who knows? Maybe he shot blanks? If so, he may have been totally isolated from the other teams. Maybe he was assured of a clean getaway for himself. Maybe that’s what he meant by “patsy” before Ruby silenced him forever. Has anyone actually tried this for themselves? Climb up 6 floors, shoot off a rifle a few times down into the ground, and have a hundred witnesses in the vicinity give a generally-unanimous opinion as to the general origin of the rifle shots? My guess, is that if Oswald was shooting less than 100 ft. away, at a downward angle from a 6th floor window, it would have been a lot more noticeable than having people all going different directions looking for the origin of the gunsmoke and rifle shots, running toward a grassy knowl, the Dal-Tex bldg., a manhole cover on a street, ect. Especially if there were crowds directly below him. What do the self-proclaimed debunking experts like Bugliosi and Posnor have to say on this hypothesis of mine? [/QUOTE] My apologies if this has already been dealt with in subsequent posts, but since Mr. Gant, by quoting me at the end, apparantly was aiming the question at me, I should respond. If my comment to you about the rifle clip seemed a bit snarky, that is because it kinda was. My reaction to your asking the question was, Geez, doesn’t this guy know even the basic facts of the case? If you don’t, then please, _please_ start learning about the _actual evidence that has been developed in the case_. Anyway, on to your post. My reaction to the whole thing is, this is typical CT talk. You speculate about what _might_ have happened, but offer no evidence as to what \*actually \*happened. This “team of snipers” thing is a case in point. Who were they? Where were they? How were all these shots “syncronized”? (That one reminds me of a laugh-out-loud incident in the London docutrial. Cyril Wecht is claiming the shots were synchronized. Bugliosi insists he explain how this was done. So Wecht assumes this ludicrous pose of someone trying to aim and fire a rifle while simultaneously trying to look at his wristwatch. :eek: ) What happened to all these bullets that were fired? What happened to the shell casings ejected from their rifles? Why were they not seen (Jean Hill doesn’t count - she didn’t get around to telling anyone that, oh, by the way, she saw a grassy-knoll shooter, _until something like sixteen years after the assassination_ :rolleyes: )? Who were they? In a court of law, it is the person advancing an argument who has the burden of providing positive evidence for the claim. It is wrong (and just plain silly) to throw out a notion and then say, “Prove it _ain’t_ true.” So I’m now compelled to say to you what I had to say to someone in the JFK thread of a couple of months back: “Where’s the beef!” (By the way: if **dropzone** is lurking in this thread, I’m _still_ waiting for a response [we moose are very patient 😉]). Permit me a very odd example of the ultimate uselessness of unsubstatiated claims: It is _possible_ that Oswald was not the shooter because, at that time, he _could_ have been in the company restroom jerking off. Don’t tell me it isn’t possible; it is. Prove to me that this wasn’t the case! You ask, “Has anyone actually tried this for themselves?” :smack: Hell, yes, it was tried on 22 November 1963! I’m sorry; that is excessive; but your apparent ignorance of the evidence it bordering on the appalling. _Several people did, in fact, see someone shooting from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building; one, Howard Brennan, saw him well enough to make a positive ID. No one saw anyone shooting from any other location, nor has any positive evidence been found that anyone was shooting from any other location._ Yeah, I know, my use of emphasis here is a bit excessive, but there are times when one feels compelled to _shout_ the truth. I’ve a suggestion: if you really wonder what Gerald Posner or Vincent Bugliosi (or, for that matter, the Warren Commission) thinks about your theories, you should just read their works. That is the best way. Anyway. Let me try to point the discussion in a more positive direction by suggesting (again) that we consider the second question in your OP; viz., **Is there any evidence out there that would tend to exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald?** (Of course, this question is open to everyone. I genuinely hope someone will take it up, because I’ve never seen the matter examined from that angle.) ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/276 "2007-08-15T14:46:22Z")
[QUOTE=ngant17] Rational thinking impresses me the most here. [/QUOTE] Sorry, but I gotta ask: what is your definition of rational thinking? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/277 "2007-08-15T18:30:10Z")
Well, the board timeouts are making me late to the party, but here goes. In an attempt at rational analysis: [QUOTE=ngant17] It would seem to me, that if I was a sniper on a 5th or 6th story building, and I was shooting at a downward slope into the general vicinity of hundreds and thousands of people in the street, in broad daylight, my sniping location would have been fairly apparent after the 2nd and 3rd shot, there would be little confusion about looking for a second or third location from totally different angles. [/quote] Well, there weren’t “hundreds and thousands of people in the street”, there were hundreds _on the sidewalks_ waving at a line of cars travelling steadily and slowly down the center of the street. Also, you’re overestimating how easily and quickly gunshots can be traced to their source. Witnesses routinely describe gunshots as “pops”, “backfires” or “firecrackers” and with the many tall buildings in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, there’d be echoes. Also, your “hundreds and thousands” of spectators weren’t standing in reverent silence - many were shouting greetings to the Kennedys and Conallys, adding to the background noise (and echoes) that could partly obscure gunshots and make it difficult to track their source. A [few witnesses](http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html#near) _did_ follow the shots to their source and spot Oswald, but they had to be in the right positions to do so, i.e. facing the Book Depository at a good angle. > [@](#): > > In war, highly-trained and veteran snipers wouldn’t want to take more than 1 shot, mabye 2, from one location to hit their target in a combat zone, because for each shot, they reveal their location to a greater degree. And lessens their chances of escaping. Sure, I guess, but while it’s the mark of a professional to get “one shot, one kill”, a sufficiently dedicated military sniper will take as many shots as necessary to complete the mission. > [@](#): > > OTOH, if a team of assassins were lying in wait to accomplish the same aim, and they were dispersed in several ideal nests for shooting their target, a military-style ‘triangulation’ as it were (remember this scenario was mentioned in Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK”), then that diverse group of snipers would serve to disorient the crowds into noticing the location of the sniper, when in fact it was a multitude of snipers in different locations. This might have some merit if there was a multitude of bullet holes in the limo (and/or its passengers) and the surrounding buildings. Since disappearing bullet technology was even less advanced in 1963 than it is now, where’s the evidence of multiple snipers? If there were "3 or 4 teams of snipers, each taking 2 or 3 shots " (all professional military-trained, I assume), wouldn’t Kennedy have more than two wounds, possibly a _lot_ more? > [@](#): > > …would have created the exact kind of pandemonium which was observed on 22 Nov. 1963 in Dealy Plaza. A single shooter blowing Kennedy’s head open creates all the pandemonium anyone needed. > [@](#): > > Yet if Oswald was part of the team of Dealy Plaza snipers, maybe he volunteered to be a distraction, who knows? Maybe he shot blanks? If so, he may have been totally isolated from the other teams. Maybe he was assured of a clean getaway for himself. Maybe that’s what he meant by “patsy” before Ruby silenced him forever. Well, this assumes a great deal without evidence, or at least without evidence I’m aware of. Sure, Oswald said he was innocent. That doesn’t mean anything. He was in custody for two days. If there were other snipers, why didn’t he name them? It’s not like Jack Ruby killed him on the spot right after Kennedy died, which would be the more logical outcome had Ruby and Oswald been part of a larger conspiracy, with Oswald being the patsy and, why not, Ruby being a hero-on-the-spot rather than being a nut who shot a man in handcuffs. > [@](#): > > Has anyone actually tried this for themselves? Climb up 6 floors, shoot off a rifle a few times down into the ground, and have a hundred witnesses in the vicinity give a generally-unanimous opinion as to the general origin of the rifle shots? If the witnesses were silently waiting, expecting to hear gunshots, then I expect most of them could zoom in the source fairly quickly. I don’t understand what this test would prove. > [@](#): > > My guess, is that if Oswald was shooting less than 100 ft. away, at a downward angle from a 6th floor window, it would have been a lot more noticeable than having people all going different directions looking for the origin of the gunsmoke and rifle shots, running toward a grassy knowl, the Dal-Tex bldg., a manhole cover on a street, ect. Especially if there were crowds directly below him. Well, the witness accounts of shots coming from different directions is easily enough explained by echoes and the limited direction-sensing ability of the human ear. In any case, the shots _didn’t_ create an instant search for the shooter(s). Many spectators had no idea that a shooting was occurring until the dramatic final shot. In any event, there are witnesses who saw a man with a rifle in the depository. I’m not aware of any who saw a man with a rifle on the grassy knoll or anywhere else. > [@](#): > > What do the self-proclaimed debunking experts like Bugliosi and Posnor have to say on this hypothesis of mine? Well, answering on their behalf, and to be blunt, your hypothesis consists of speculating on other sniper teams firing vanishing bullets, all operating with no direct eyewitnesses despite the hundreds of people in the area. What evidence might your hypothesis explain that a single shooter does not? As for echoes, the overly elaborate test you propose can be more simply simulated by taking a small number of people to, say, a schoolyard, having them shut their eyes and try to point out the source of an exploding fire cracker or cap pistol, or even a person loudly clapping his hands. See if the witnesses standing near the school building, where echoes may be more apparent, come up with different results. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/278 "2007-08-15T18:57:42Z")
> [@](#): > > In war, highly-trained and veteran snipers wouldn’t want to take more than 1 shot, mabye 2, from one location to hit their target in a combat zone, because for each shot, they reveal their location to a greater degree. And lessens their chances of escaping. Except Oswald wasn’t a highly-trained and veteran sniper, he was an adequete shot by the standards of the Marine Corp, but nothing to write home about. If Oswald was a veteran sniper, he would have blown Kennedy’s head off with one shot. Oswald fired three shots because that’s what it took for him to blow Kennedy’s head off on that particular day. You think Oswald should have fired two shots, realized he was going to give away his position, and held his fire? That might make sense on a battlefield, since no no sniper would consider one enemy soldier’s death to be worth dying for. But what are the motivations of a political assassin? Some might might take a shot only if they were relatively certain they could escape afterwards, others might not care if they lived or died. Hinkley certainly didn’t have any fancy escape plan after shooting Reagan. Oswald fired and missed, fired and wounded, fired and killed, and then tried to escape. That a veteran sniper on the battlefield would probably not have taken that third, or even second shot means nothing, since we don’t know what Oswald’s emotional state was. He was crazy enough to shoot at the president, that logically requires us to imagine he was willing to run a significant risk of discovery and/or death to accomplish this goal. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/279 "2007-08-15T19:38:36Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] You think Oswald should have fired two shots, realized he was going to give away his position, and held his fire? That might make sense on a battlefield, since no no sniper would consider one enemy soldier’s death to be worth dying for. [/QUOTE] It’s worth remembering that soldiers on a battlefield a) post sentries and lookouts, and b) have some idea where the bad guys are. A soldier isn’t going to begin looking at the man next to him, or at his own fortification, and probably isn’t going to be looking back toward his own lines. Those are the places the sniper is least likely to be. A civilian in a crowd has no such advantage. Edit: Not that I’m correcting you, **Lemur** , just amplifying your explanation. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950/280 "2007-08-15T20:40:49Z")
As an additional note, the motorcade was accompanied by several motorcycle officers, adding to the noise. Evidence of other snipers needs more than where some spectators thought the shots might be coming from. Unexplainable bullet trajectories, eyewitness accounts and/or photographs of other snipers, shell casings, etc. would be useful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-lee-harvey-oswald-assassinate-jfk/414950.md?page=15)